And He Always Played Second Chair
by Revell
Summary: In which Klavier Gavin learns a few lessons on life from his older brother; the most important of these is that second chances are always given too late, and sometimes they never come at all. Gen.


It's been a long time since they've shared a meal.

Kristoph eats as slowly as ever, picking at his food for what feels like hours before he eats any of it, and even then he seems critical of what he's managed. Klavier is already half-finished before Kristoph has decided everything is separated out far enough for him to feel comfortable eating it; he knows that the next few minutes will be occupied by his older brother deciding what order to eat it all in. It's a ritual he's seen for years, whenever Kristoph is home, and he almost doesn't mind it anymore.

"You still don't like any of it touching?"

"Well spotted." Kristoph shifts his fork between his long fingers, adjusting and resettling it.

"What difference does it make," Klavier asks calmly, smiling at Kristoph in that way he has when he knows he'll probably get a rise out of him, "if you're just going to eat it all anyway?"

Kristoph continues to poke at his food, finally eating some of it before he answers. "Maybe I wouldn't have to take so long if you wouldn't mix everything together," he says, and Klavier isn't sure that he's joking until Kristoph looks up at him. He smiles softly; gentle teasing is in his eyes. "As it is, maybe I enjoy making you wait."

* * *

_Klavier pushed his shades up the bridge of his nose, feeling tired and hot and not bothering to look inconspicuous as he scanned the throng of people; he inhaled, puffing his cheeks out slightly, then let his breath out in a long, slow hiss that was impatient as hell._

_When he finally saw Kristoph, he didn't look the same. Not as Klavier had remembered him, anyway._

_He was sitting with his legs crossed, a book of some sort in his hand; he wasn't reading it, but rather was marking his place with his index finger slipped into the fold of the book, holding the cover ajar as he made polite conversation with the woman next to him. Klavier couldn't hear him, but he knew what he was saying –_

_I don't know, I find it to be a beautiful day.  
Maybe just a little rainy, but rain can be beautiful, too.  
No, I haven't read it before; I've enjoyed it so far, though.  
Yes, I'm waiting for my brother. Flight 1276; I think it's late.  
I've definitely missed him; it will be nice to see him again.  
Ah, his plane has apparently arrived; I believe I've just seen him, I think he's over there...  
Yes, that's him, I'm sure now; he's right over there with the jewelry and the smile and –  
Do you really think so? Well, I suppose our resemblance can be strong; I –  
How kind of you to say that. Thank you very much; I'll tell him that, too.  
It was so nice to meet you; may I have your name again?  
It's been lovely. I hope you enjoy your flight._

_Kristoph moved over to Klavier a few moments later, draping an arm around his shoulder in a way that suggested that either he had never learned how to hug someone like he meant it or he was waiting for Klavier to flinch away. Klavier hugged him properly, wrapping his arms around his older brother's waist and squeezing him tightly; Kristoph's eyes widened slightly and his movements were somehow even more awkward than before, but he shifted his position and held Klavier anyway. When Klavier let him go, Kristoph stepped back and rested his hands on Klavier's shoulders, holding him at arm's length and studying him as though he were seeing him for the first time and trying to decide if he liked what he saw._

_"You look well," Kristoph said finally. "Your new career hasn't been too hard on you. Good."_

_Klavier tried to build memories at that point; he tried to find some things he would remember, poetic things, but for all his metaphors and observations and flowery words about the world, none of those would stick._

_All that he would remember later would be the way Kristoph smelled clean and slightly powdery, like a thin layer of expensive foundation, and how startlingly pale he had become in the years since Klavier had seen him last._

* * *

Klavier looks around the house after dinner.

It's new and mostly still in boxes, but the windows are large and huge amounts of sun stream in through the light fabric of the drapes. "I never thought you to be one for so much light," Klavier says.

"No?"

"Did you?"

It's hard for Klavier to figure out what Kristoph's eyes do at that point, but there's a difference and the closest description that comes to him is that they _sharpen_ - analyzing the question and seeming to see Klavier in such a complete way that it makes him uncomfortable.

After a moment, the look passes; Kristoph seems to find the question harmless, and he presses his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose.

"It's an improvement over the apartment, don't you think? I wanted the space, and the light is good to study by when time allows me to be home over the afternoon."

"Of course, the only use for sunlight is a practical one, _ja_?"

Kristoph shakes his head slightly, and Klavier hears the laugh in his voice as Kristoph tells him to help him unpack some of his things.

A little while later, as he sets in place yet another legal book that feels like it weighs roughly as much as the shelving unit he puts it on, he notices Kristoph has stopped his work for a moment to settle on the windowseat, reaching out and running his fingertips along the light wood of the frame. His eyes are closed lightly; he looks relaxed. He's still pale.

Klavier has seen that sharp look that Kristoph had given him before today; he knows it's just one of those things Kristoph does - he's paid to overanalyze, to find things most wouldn't, and though he sometimes wishes that Kristoph would leave his work at the office where it belongs, Klavier also knows that he won't. It's why Klavier doesn't tease Kristoph about being distracted; he simply smiles and gets back to work before Kristoph can catch him and chide him for slacking.

* * *

_Kristoph drove them back to his apartment that evening; Klavier fell asleep in the car._

_The apartment was smaller than Klavier would have imagined; the front room was neat to the point of being immaculate, but the bedroom held a large, crammed amount of what Klavier would call "my brother's stuff" and Kristoph would refer to as "personal belongings." It all had an order to it, though, and despite the clutter Klavier could see it when he looked through sleep-blurred eyes._

_In his bedroom, his personal space, Kristoph had always lived in perfectly organized chaos. He always had several things crowding the room, and on bad days things fell over, but if Klavier were to ask him exactly where he had set this book, that file, he would always know exactly where it was. Klavier had tested him on it before, when they were young, and he had always been amazed at this apparent ability. He would probably never know how Kristoph did it, though at that point, he wasn't thinking about it too much; he was entirely too exhausted to care._

_He leaned into Kristoph's shoulder as they entered his bedroom, feeling his brother's hair tickling his cheek – it was longer than it had been when Kristoph had left, coiled and resting across his left shoulder, sleek and shining and just asking to have someone else's fingers muss it up. _

_If Kristoph was at all the same, he would never allow anyone else to touch it._

_Kristoph stiffened slightly at his brother's movements; he seemed to relax when Klavier began burrowing his head into Kristoph's shoulder, as though he suddenly understood. Klavier could feel Kristoph shift slightly, nestling his face into Klavier's still-short hair and kissing the crown of his head before walking him to the bed. He moved his shoulder in what could have been a small shrug when they got there, nudging Klavier off of him; Kristoph continued gripping his upper arm until Klavier had found the bed and was sitting on it._

_He felt Kristoph move as he lay down but knew he was still standing in the doorway, watching Klavier as he settled under the sheets only to battle drowsily with the blanket a moment later, finally kicking it onto the floor out of habit; he punched at the mattress, flopped into a different position, and could still feel his brother's eyes on him as he fell asleep._

_He found Kristoph on the couch the next morning, sleeping with the book he had been reading at the airport still dangling from his fingertips, half-open._

* * *

Klavier attempts to sleep in Kristoph's guest room that night; he's used to sleeping in beds that don't belong to him, either alone or with some woman whose name he won't remember three minutes after he wakes up next to her, but tonight he has a hard time keeping his eyes closed. He knows Kristoph hasn't gone to sleep yet; he can barely see the light from his brother's bedroom trickling in underneath his closed door, and he doesn't have to consider for too long before he gets up.

He taps on Kristoph's door and is surprised when it swings open at his touch, as though it hadn't been closed firmly enough to latch. Kristoph looks up from where he's reclining against too many pillows, a thick case file opened on his lap. Klavier leans against the doorframe casually as Kristoph closes the file with a soft thud and then feels the edges with his fingertips, making sure none of the papers inside have come loose to poke out of the sides.

"I was wondering," Klavier says, putting more of his weight against the doorframe and brushing his bangs aside. "Every time I see you, every time I come to visit, you have a lot happening. Cases everywhere. And now you're moving house, too."

"Yes?" Kristoph arches an eyebrow slowly, anticipating the question but allowing Klavier to ask it.

"How do you retain your sanity?"

"Why? Is touring getting too hard for you?" Kristoph says, a hint of amusement in his tone, enough to let Klavier know he's teasing. "I can't even begin to contemplate how hard it must be to be a rock god. Imagine having everything done for me by personal assistants, and going home to any woman I want!"

"As I said, I was just wondering," Klavier says, flashing that easy smile that makes him so popular with those same women Kristoph refers to; he shifts against the doorframe again, bracing his arm between his head and the wood, and his fingers graze against the blond coil he's taken to wearing, a near-mirror of his brother's, rendered slightly inaccurate by the thinness of his hair and the cut of his bangs. "You just always seem so busy. When we were small, too; you were always busy with something or other."

"It's how I am, Klavier," Kristoph replies; the teasing tone is gone, replaced by something else that implies that he's in the right mood to listen. "What's troubling you tonight?"

"Nothing, really; I'm just thinking. About how you always know what to do, even at work when everyone else thinks your client is guilty. You don't ever seem troubled; you're almost never scared. It's just...you're always so efficient despite everything, Kristoph, and I don't know how you do it."

"Are you worried about me?" Kristoph shifts on the bed, sitting up a bit more against the pillows before sinking back against them, a strange look in his eyes that's less than reassuring. "There's no need; you said so yourself. I'm fine."

"_Ach_, I know. Just...be careful, hm?"

Kristoph looks at him strangely. "I'm here to keep the legal system balanced. Defense attorneys are a part of it, too, Klavier; it's not just the prosecutors putting the criminals away. Let me do my job without you worrying about me." He goes back to the files then, trying to find his place on the page he opens to.

"It's fine. I told you, I was thinking too much tonight. I just can't sleep." Klavier looks at him for a moment. "What are you looking at, anyway?"

"Murder trial records. They deal with recent serial killings; it's all ugly business that I'm sure you've already heard about entirely too much."

"Cases of yours?"

"Some."

"Acquittals?"

"All of them."

"When you were defending them, did you ever think about why they did it?"

"_Might_ have done it," Kristoph corrects him, eyes scanning a bit further down the page. "I told you, they were acquitted."

"_Might_ have done it, then?"

Kristoph sighs and looks up at Klavier again. "Not really," he says. "I don't sympathize with _why_ people do things as they do. They press for it in the courtroom, but if you work there long enough you'll learn that the motive, the _why_ of a case, doesn't matter when it comes to the true guilty party - judgment comes only for _what_ was done. Once you find out what happened, often-times you'll also find that the motive is just as discouraging as it would be if there had been none at all."

Klavier doesn't know what to say. Kristoph smiles gently at him; when he speaks again, his tone has returned to that of subtle teasing. "Why do you ask, Klavier? Are you afraid that underneath this calm exterior, I'm thinking that one day I might take my work home with me just a little _too_ much?"

Klavier doesn't answer, and something in his expression makes Kristoph laugh.

"I know I immerse myself in my work - something you don't seem to understand," he adds lightly, adjusting his glasses with a smirk bordering on playful. "But honestly, Klavier. Imagine someone like me doing something like that! It's absolutely ridiculous."

"You're..._ja_, you're right," Klavier responds, but he remains uncertain for a reason he can't place. "It would never happen."

* * *

_Breakfast the next morning was slow; Kristoph finally finished eating when they had been sitting there a bit over forty-five minutes. He set his fork down carefully, avoiding the odd scraping sound that Klavier knew he made himself once in a while – the one that made Kristoph's left eye twitch in a strange manner and his jaw clench a little tighter._

_Klavier was in a better mood that morning. It lasted until Kristoph turned the topic away from food and into real-life dealings._

_"How was law school?" Kristoph said quietly, the small smile he usually wore still playing on his lips. "It's been too long."_

_Klavier didn't falter much – he only had to inhale once, hard, before he could answer. "Why didn't you write to me, Kristoph? You could have found out how it was. I would have told you then." He glared; Kristoph didn't flinch._

_"And so you punish me by not telling me now?" Despite his words, he didn't seem hurt. "How unlike you, Klavier, especially considering I don't seem to recall any letters from you."_

_Klavier looked at him, eyes narrowed, offended; Kristoph continued to stare at him, studying his face, his own expression as peaceful as it ever was. Before long Klavier had to glance away; he stared at the prongs of the fork Kristoph laid down moments before, then gave his answer._

_"It was difficult. Long. The amount of work involved made me think that maybe I could understand you a bit more." He paused, looking up from the now-empty dishes to lock his eyes on Kristoph's. "Then you never wrote, and I wondered if I'd ever really want to."_

_Kristoph looked at Klavier for a moment longer, then stood to leave._

_"I trust you'll handle the dishes, as I made breakfast," Kristoph said passively, standing in the doorway of the kitchen. "After all that money invested in your schooling, I would have thought you'd behave a bit more like an adult; instead, you whine at me over a few letters? Grow up, Klavier; law school is not the last time you'll be on your own. You'll be more valuable company after you learn that – maybe then you won't disappoint me like this and we can have a mature conversation."_

_With that, he turned and left; Klavier only managed to sulk for five minutes at the most before he pushed away from the table and followed him into the living room. Kristoph looked up from his work and smiled at him, and Klavier was reasonably sure there was approval in his eyes as well as his expression._

_Kristoph didn't help with the dishes, but watched Klavier as he washed them, offering decidedly more pleasant conversation than before. Klavier hated dealing with chores and knew that the job probably wasn't to Kristoph's standards, but he tried anyway, and Kristoph didn't stop him or criticize._

_He simply kept him company._

* * *

Klavier runs his hands along the violin case as he sits in the car a few hours after he gets out of court. The motorcycle would have been too conspicuous, and Kristoph doesn't know he's coming; the full-sized violin is intended as a surprise. It's a good length for Kristoph's reach, and the bow and instrument in the case are both well-made and ridiculously expensive.

He doesn't hand it to Kristoph when he arrives; the prison guards make that task difficult, and though he could use his leverage to hand it to him personally, he gives it to one of them instead. He returns to the car, knowing that the bribe he handed off under the case will be sufficient to ensure that Kristoph will receive the violin in solitary confinement.

He knows that Kristoph will look at it, and maybe he'll tune it and play one of the concertos Klavier remembers listening to that day as they unpacked, after Kristoph slid out of the windowseat and turned on some music to hum along with as they worked, the violin solo lines counterpointed by the darker baritone sound of Kristoph's voice. Maybe he'll just run his hands along the wood and not even try to coax any music out of it, but put it among the collection of nice things he's been accumulating on those shelves that he had asked for and Klavier had approved to have given to him.

With any luck, Kristoph will look at the note Klavier left for him, tucked under that perfect violin and written in his less-than-perfect scrawl. With even more luck he'll actually read it, and he'll think about it, and he'll respond in his small, neat handwriting, explaining his thoughts and his lies with as few words as possible because that's just the way he is.

He knows Kristoph will probably never send him an explanation of any sort, but that's fine, too.

Klavier sleeps that night in a bed that isn't his own, with some woman whose name he'll forget within three minutes of waking up next to her. He doesn't envy Kristoph, sleeping alone in his cell, surrounded by his books and his files and his poisoned envelopes; he doesn't wish he could be with him, because Kristoph doesn't want any assistance and he isn't sure that he could make himself offer, even if there was a chance Kristoph would accept it.

Despite his indifference, somewhere in the back of his mind Klavier knows he'll probably always wonder what Kristoph thinks about, during those hours when the sun is no longer useful and the lights are turned off in Central Prison. He'll handle Kristoph's clothing after he dies and wonder how long his suit jackets will still carry the same soft, slightly powdery scent Kristoph always did. He'll try to remember how long he had failed to notice that his brother had always been pale; he'll probably always remember the lies.

The first thing Klavier intends to forget about his older brother is how much he loved him.


End file.
